The left-wing media, which isn’t happy at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton candidacy—or at least the seeming inevitability of such an occurrence—have stepped up their attacks on the former Secretary of State in an attempt to broaden the potential field.

Last week it was the oldest, and one of the most influential, left-wing publications, The Nation,opining on the need for a challenger to Hillary in 2016:

“The Democratic Party’s challenge today is that, in the minds of many voters, it is no longer linked with the issues it says are important. In part, that’s because big money and bad media warp our politics. But it’s also because the party is too close to corporate funders and too frequently fails to speak to the tens of millions still struggling in a weak recovery. One of the core understandings of Project 45 is that, in the process of nominating a presidential candidate, parties define themselves not merely as a reflection of the candidate, but as a reflection of the demands raised in primaries and platform fights. For this process to work, however, there must be challenges both to the front-runners and to assumptions about what is possible and what is necessary.”

The Nation claims that their message isn’t anti-Hillary, but pro-democracy, and that what the Democratic Party needs is a candidate with a “smart, populist program untethered to Wall Street,” something that Hillary is not.

That candidate would resemble Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who will hold a leadership post in the new Democratic Senate minority starting next month, and who is seen by the left as a credible challenger to Hillary, though she has declined to discuss that possibility in deference to Mrs. Clinton.

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Warren also received a boost from liberal columnist Juan Williams, who has just given her his 2014 “Member of Congress of the Year” award, saying that she is a major threat to a Clinton candidacy:

“The Massachusetts senator could become the Barack Obama of 2016, able to grab the Democrats’ presidential nomination from the favorite, Hillary Clinton, by coming at her from the left. The defining issue for Democrats in 2008 was Iraq. In 2016 it will be the economy. Warren is much more in step with the party on this issue than is Clinton.

“Warren’s economic populism also defines the party’s present. After losses in the midterms, the Democrats have concluded that it is time for them to go on offense, utilizing Warren’s issues — raising the minimum wage, cutting better deals on student loans and supporting equal pay for women.

“The new political direction set by Warren led Senate Democrats to add the first-term senator to their leadership team. They created a position just for her: “Strategic Policy Adviser to the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.”

“That means Warren will be at the table shaping the identity of Democrats in the Senate, as they become a loud, defiant minority beginning in January.

“But Warren looms largest over the 2016 race.”

Hillary Clinton and her supporters thought she was a shoo-in for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. The left-wing media have other plans and they could very well succeed in upending the race, which is not good news for a party that is reeling from the devastating midterm elections and is in dire need of showing a unified front heading into the 2016 election cycle.

This article originally appeared at AIM.org and is reprinted here with permission.